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From Brian Greene, one of the world's leading
physicists, comes a grand tour of the universe that makes
us look at reality in a completely different way.
Space and time form the very fabric of the
cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts.
Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could
the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel
to the past?
Greene uses these questions to guide us
toward modern science's new and deeper understanding of
the universe. From Newton's unchanging realm in which space
and time are absolute, to Einstein's fluid conception of
spacetime, to quantum mechanics' entangled arena where vastly
distant objects can bridge their spatial separation to instantaneously
coordinate their behavior or even undergo teleportation,
Greene reveals our world to be very different from what
common experience leads us to believe. Focusing on the enigma
of time, Greene establishes that nothing in the laws of
physics insists that it run in any particular direction
and that "time's arrow" is a relic of the universe's
condition at the moment of the big bang. And in explaining
the big bang itself, Greene shows how recent cutting-edge
developments in superstring and M-theory may reconcile the
behavior of everything from the smallest particle to the
largest black hole. This startling vision culminates in
a vibrant eleven-dimensional "multiverse," pulsating
with ever-changing textures, where space and time themselves
may dissolve into subtler, more fundamental entities.
Sparked by the trademark wit, humor, and
brilliant use of analogy that have made The Elegant Universe
a modern classic, Brian Greene takes us all, regardless
of our scientific backgrounds, on an irresistible and revelatory
journey to the new layers of reality that modern physics
has discovered lying just beneath the surface of our everyday
world.
Brian Greene received his undergraduate
degree from Harvard University and his doctorate from Oxford
University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He joined the
physics faculty of Cornell University in 1990, was appointed
to a full professorship in 1995, and in 1996 joined Columbia
University where he is professor of physics and mathematics.
He has lectured at both a general and a technical level
in more than twenty-five countries and is widely regarded
for a number of groundbreaking discoveries in superstring
theory. He lives in Andes, New York, and New York City.
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